One of the reasons we liked the Nexus 7 so much was that it felt like a 7-inch tablet done right. Neither the form factor nor the $199 price point were new—Samsung, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others were all pushing 7-inch Android tablets—but the ASUS-Google joint was the first whose hardware, software, and price came together to make a convincing case for a smaller tablet.

The Google-backed, Samsung-developed Nexus 10 has no such luxury—not only is the 10-inch tablet market Apple's bread and butter, but competition from new Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets as well as other Android tablets is so stiff (and the signal-to-noise ratio is so low) that it's hard to stand out from the crowd. Further complicating matters is the fact that going all the way back to the Motorola Xoom, 10-inch Android tablets have had trouble gaining a foothold in the market, creating a dearth of tablet apps that is more noticeable on a 10-inch screen than a 7-inch screen.

The Nexus 10 is the first 10-inch tablet to bear Google's Nexus branding, and as such it has its work cut out for it: not only does it need to be a shining example of what a big Android tablet should be, it needs to convince developers and potential buyers alike that Android can offer as good an experience on a larger screen as its competitors can. Does it succeed, or is this just another 10-inch Android tablet that doesn't live up to its promise?

Body and build quality

Enlarge/ How much more black could this tablet be? The answer is none. None more black.

Andrew Cunningham

The Nexus 10 is a very black tablet. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it just lacks the silver highlights of something like the Nexus 7, the Galaxy Note 10.1, or the full-size iPad (though the black iPhone 5, black iPod touch, and black iPad mini are all similarly jet-black throughout). The all-black slab measures 10.39" x 6.99" x 0.35" and weighs 1.33 pounds—as a widescreen tablet it's taller and narrower than the full-size iPad, but it's also slightly thinner and lighter. For reference, the fourth-generation iPad is 0.37" thick and weighs 1.44 pounds.

Enlarge/ The fourth-generation iPad is wider and shorter than the Nexus 10 is in portrait mode, but more importantly is a little thicker and a little heavier.

Andrew Cunningham

That weight difference might not sound like much, but it does make the Nexus 10 a bit easier to hold for long stretches, depending on how you're holding it: if you've got it in landscape mode with your hand at the bottom of the tablet in the middle or if you've got it in both hands, the Nexus 10's lighter weight does in fact make it easier to hold. Holding it in portrait mode or one-handed by its left or right edge, however, does feel a bit lopsided, a common issue with widescreen tablets.

Enlarge/ The Micro USB and headphone jack. The Galaxy Note 10.1 used a proprietary connector for charging, so the inclusion of a standard plug is a nice change.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ A Micro HDMI port for connecting the tablet to a TV or monitor.

Enlarge/ The Nexus 10's dock connector, which hopefully won't prove to be as vestigial as the Nexus 7's.

Andrew Cunningham

If you've ever handled an iOS or Android tablet before, the available ports and buttons and their layout shouldn't throw you for a loop. If you're holding the tablet in landscape mode with the webcam at the top of the screen: the tablet's left edge houses its headphone jack and Micro USB port, which is used for both data and charging; the power button and volume rocker are on its top edge; a Micro HDMI port is on the right edge; and a dock connector with six contacts and a small indentation for some sort of retention mechanism is on the bottom edge.

We aren't aware of any accessories that will be using the dock connector (and the same holds true of the Nexus 7's four contact dock connector, months after its introduction), but that doesn't mean it won't ever be used. Sadly, the Nexus 10 lacks any sort of SD card slot, micro or otherwise; its 16GB or 32GB of internal storage is all you get. Finally, the tablet also includes a white notification LED in the screen's bezel that will gently pulse if the tablet needs something; I ended up disabling this because the tablet seemed to be blinking at me constantly, but your mileage may vary.

Enlarge/ The tablet has two front-facing stereo speakers that run up and down the edges of the screen.

Andrew Cunningham

The Nexus 10 also features front-facing stereo speakers that run down the edges of the screen, similar to (but taller than) the front-facing speakers on the Galaxy Note 10.1. The volume is roughly comparable to that produced by the rear-facing speakers on the newest iPads and the Nexus 7, but the sound quality is noticeably better (if still not great), and front-facing speakers are more difficult to block or muffle with your hands no matter how you're holding the tablet.

I have to admit, after spending a week or so with the Galaxy Note 10.1 a few months back, I wasn’t terribly excited to hear that Samsung would also be handling the construction of the Nexus 10. At $499, the Note 10.1 costs as much as high-end 10-inch tablets like the iPad and the Surface RT, but was made of overly flexible, chintzy plastic and used a decidedly mid-range 1280x800 screen.

The Nexus 10’s body is also mostly plastic, but otherwise thankfully shares little in common with its non-Nexus cousin, which had a plastic back that was so flexible that you could feel the tablet's internals through it if you pressed hard enough. The Nexus 10's light but sturdy injection-molded plastic body isn't quite as solid as the aluminum back of the iPad, but there's much less bending and flexing, and as noted the reduction in weight compared to the iPad does make it nicer to hold for extended periods of time. In short, the Nexus 10 is an example of plastic at its best, and its solid construction is the very antithesis of the Galaxy Note 10.1.

One thing that is sorely missed from the Nexus 7 is its lightly textured back, which gave you something to grip when you were using the tablet. The Nexus 10 also has a grippy, textured back, but it feels smooth and rubbery and altogether less comfortable than the Nexus 7. It also picks up smudges and fingerprints very easily, and once they’re there, they can be difficult to get out. A separate strip across the top of the tablet’s back has a texture similar (but not identical) to that of the Nexus 7.

Enlarge/ The sort-of-rubbery back of the Nexus 10 is fine, but we prefer the Nexus 7.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The textured strip on the back of the tablet can apparently be removed and replaced with a cover that flips to protect the screen while not in use.

Andrew Cunningham

I do find that I actually prefer the textured plastic back of the Nexus 10 to the aluminum back used by the iPads—the latter gets pretty cold to the touch in November in New Jersey, and the tablet is only too happy to transfer that coldness straight to your hands. The Nexus 10 is a bit more hospitable when pulling it out of a bag that’s been outside.

This Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 share a sort of visual kinship despite the fact that the tablets are manufactured by completely different companies—the texturing and large Nexus logos on the back, the liberal use of black, the stock Android installations, and even the tablets' identical boot screens all reinforce this notion. There are small inconsistencies—the differences in texturing is one, similar-but-incompatible dock connectors is another—but the two tablets have enough in common to be unmistakably related to one another.

Enlarge/ The two Nexus tablets are obviously related, even though they come from different manufacturers.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The textures used here are similar enough to one another, though not identical.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The boot screens are identical, further emphasizing the tablets' kinship.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Nexus dock connectors are different in design, but similar in that no accessories take advantage of them yet.

Andrew Cunningham

Dat screen: 4 million pixels and counting

Enlarge/ The Nexus 10 and the Retina iPads both have gorgeous screens. The Nexus 10 has a slightly better pixel density, while the iPad has slightly better color and viewing angles.

Andrew Cunningham

The real star of the show here is the Nexus 10’s crisp 2560x1600 screen (a crisp screen similarly stole the spotlight earlier this year when the iPad got its first Retina Display). When we first wrote about the new Samsung Exynos 5 chip that the tablet is using, we noted that its ARM Mali-T604 graphics processor had been developed with the pixel-pushing power and memory bandwidth to drive high-resolution displays, and that's just what Samsung and Google are using it for here. Text in particular is extremely crisp, and unlike Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Mac Retina displays, Android apps should be able to take advantage of this without modification. Icons and images that haven't been optimized for high-resolution displays are still going to look a bit blurry, though.

Text is universally sharp, but icons and applications can differ—note the crisp Chrome logo compared to the fuzzy Firefox logo.

I do find that I actually prefer the textured plastic back of the Nexus 10 to the aluminum back used by the iPads—the latter gets pretty cold to the touch in November in New Jersey, and the tablet is only too happy to transfer that coldness straight to your hands

I did not know Apple has been able to change the laws of thermal dynamics. I learn something new here every day.

I do find that I actually prefer the textured plastic back of the Nexus 10 to the aluminum back used by the iPads—the latter gets pretty cold to the touch in November in New Jersey, and the tablet is only too happy to transfer that coldness straight to your hands

I did not know Apple has been able to change the laws of thermal dynamics. I learn something new here every day.

There is precious little difference between sucking heat from your hands as transferring cold.

I think one of the biggest reasons (for me) to choose an Android tablet over an iPad would be expandable storage via SD or microSD.

The fact that Google isn't including such a port isn't doing them any favors when a customer weighs his or her options in selecting one over the other.

Whilst not ideal, you can easily plug an external device into the Nexus 7 - i'm assuming you can do the same for a Nexus 10. Apple crippled this capability - so you can still achieve your goal with Android.

For some reason, Google thinks its users are too stupid to use external media or file browsers. While Android supports mounting external drives, Nexus devices do not. You have to get root to enable this functionality. (So it's not a problem for me, or anyone else reading this site.)

Samsung and some other OEMs have seen it useful to enable mounting USB drives and include a file browser by default.

That and a 1.50 cable from monoprice and I've got oodles of storage without rooting. Its plenty good enough for me.

@AncientCreep Thanks for the info man. It was trying to find a way to get music files on a tablet that doesn't support microSD and I've found the solution! I'm somewhat OCD'ed on rooting a tablet, so again, thanks for the suggestion!!

The real star of the show here is the Nexus 10’s crisp 2560x1600 screen

Why can't laptop manufacturers use similar high resolutions for laptops? I looked hard for a mid-priced (read: below $1500) 15-inch laptop with a resolution of 1920x1080 or higher and failed miserably. I really don't want to cough up $2200+ for a retina macbook pro.

It's around the 21min mark. I think i might be even better than an iPad for comic reading, since it's higher res and its aspect ratio seems more suited to it(i have no frame of reference tough, i'm judging by what i see).

Why when tablets have these incredibly (many would say unnecessarily) high resolution screens can I not get a well built 12" laptop with even close to these resolutions? What I really want is something like a thinkpad X2xx series laptop with a screen with this sort of resolution. Please?

It starts to become complicated at that point. The 13" Macbook Pro with retina display has the same res as this, but it's said to be somewhat laggy and stuttery. If that happens with a full voltage Core-i processor and integrated graphics, it might be just too much to ask with an ULV processor running the same kind of heavy desktop software. Also, that machine costs $1,700, and machines at those prices are not exactly mainstream, most PC makers are not gonna bother.

It's not a totally positive thing, but if you count that, you could count everything as a negative. HDMI connections, any screen size whatsoever, there are drawbacks to everything. An SD card slot is a problem for waterproofing too, a 10" tablet size is too small for many uses, hell, my last notebook computer I bought one with a 17" display because I like my screen real estate generally. The slot's probably not as energy efficient as built in storage.

The lacking slot is definitely a negative for consumers compared to the storage costs. The positives of its absence hardly compares. It's a qualified negative that won't affect everyone the same, to be sure. Adding a slot adds costs and issues for both creator and consumer to deal with, but I can't agree that they are significant compared to the benefits.

uhuznaa wrote:

On the other hand just assuming that bluntly including a SD card slot is positive is also a problem. There are lots of problems with removable storage that gets not only used for copying data on and off a device. And with such storage media if it is much slower than the built-in storage. And if it has to use/support a filesystem that is meant to be widely supported elsewhere (like FAT) while lacking or torpedoing features the OS may just need when used as "normal" storage (permissions, encryption, indexing of data, etc.).

This is not only true for smartphones and tablets, it also is and always was the case for computers in general. Things aren't that simple. Extendable storage generally is a good thing, but just including a SD card slot opens a can of nasty worms. Include it and people immediately start to use it for things it can't really support.

Yeah, SD cards aren't as awesome as they're cracked up to be. My rooted Nook Color running CM developed this habit every now and then of swapping the sdcard and emmc partitions every couple boot cycles, meaning eventually I've had to install every app twice so that an unlucky reboot won't leave me without my apps. Which brings me to my 2nd point. Why do so many apps on Gingerbread assume your device has an SD card? Why do they leave so much crap folders and settings files on the sd card? I have 5GB of internal memory but the apps insist on installing data to a 3.6GB sd card I have on it. What gives? And yes, the sd card performs slower than the native memory

Okay, that's a better argument to go from. I have noticed a profusion of disorganized folders popping up even on the imaginary "SD Card" section of the Nexus 7's storage. I'd prefer to force apps to create folders where I want, at least under an Apps or games folder. Though I haven't had any problems with the card in my phone that's running 2.3. Except for speed, those aren't specifically problems with having SD cards but with the implementation.

I'd like a full size SD card reader like on Sony tablets. If it's too confusing, then Google should just restrict it to moving files and media playback. It would make for the best way to review photos with that display.

Awesome device.... until you take in the fact that it doesnt have expandable storage. Deal breaker for me. I dont care how cheap it is, without expandable storage, it's worthless. I have an ASUS Transformer Prime with the docking station. It has 32gb on board storage which I like to keep free of clutter (same concept as a PC, the more clutter on your hard drive, the slower it is). I also have a 64gb microSD card in the expansion slot filled with Music and books. I have the attached dock keyboard as well and inside that I have a 32gb full size SD card for documents, emails, extra pictures ect. And when I need to add something else to the device, I simply plug a thumb drive into the full size USB port on the dock and transfer it that way. The name of the game here is choice. This is why we have gravitated to Android in the first place. We didnt like the closed nature of the apple products. We didnt like the fact that you couldnt expand the storage capacity and we didnt like the fact that you could really access the file system. Now Google is making some of the same mistakes and worse yet is they have basically told us that its too bad. They will never put expandable storage on the Nexus line.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.